Pikmin 2 is a wholehearted step above its predecessor. Pikmin 2 introduces new pikmin, new enemies, and a brand new gameplay loop, all of which work super well.

A testament to Pikmin 2's design is the two reused overworld maps. In topography, they are the same as Pikmin 1. However, their more busy design lends itself beautifully, replacing simple affairs under a time limit with very involved areas geared towards exploring at a slower rate.

However, while I see the vision, and respect it fully, this game is easily the most stressful I have ever played. Pikmin 2 introduces dungeons, multi-floor affairs where you go down each floor, collecting treasures, and defeating a boss at the end. These are the only places you can get the new Purple and White Pikmin (a decision that grew on me given how powerful they are), and Pikmin accrual in general is VERY limited. If Pikmin die, which is bound to happen, you have to deal with it.

I am not going to mince words, Pikmin 2's dungeons killed my enjoyment for Pikmin 2. I liked the original game's (and the overworld of 2 to an extent) gameplay loop of managing time and resources to get the most done by the end of the day. Overworld Pikmin tests your time management in a very clever and well executed way. Dungeon Pikmin throws this out the window. I can deal with how brutal the dungeons are. They are patently a great test of skill for the player when it comes to dealing with enemies while trying to take minimal to no casualties. In one dungeon, I had too many blue pikmin die, meaning I had one too few blue pikmin to move this treasure in the water, so I had to redo the dungeon and play smarter to make sure I got it.

What made me loathe dungeons was how long they are. Dungeons in this game are absolute slogs with no time limit. Some dungeons took half an hour, while most took a good hour of neurotically maneuvering Pikmin to neutralize threats safely and get every treasure, for if you miss a treasure, that's another run through the whole dungeon. The amount of time these dungeons commanded ran counter to what I believe made Pikmin 1 great in the first place, and all that time spent in dungeons wore down at my patience and made me despise them.

I got about halfway through the game, and knowing I had some evil dungeons ahead of me had me very worried. For the sake of not driving myself crazy, I had to put this game down. I commend it for what it is, I really do, and I see the hype. However the tedium of the dungeons stressed me out to the point where the game was feeling less like a fun experience that I wanted to engage with, and more like a stressful chore.

This is a real two steps forward, one step back kind of game. It improves on Pikmin 1's mechanics in almost every way, especially with the Pikmin's AI and pathfinding (though its still not perfect), it looks and sounds excellent, and the level design of the surface areas is great. The issues come in when you enter the dungeons.

On paper the idea of a pikmin dungeon crawler with a big emphasis on endurance through smart strategy and resources management is a pretty interesting idea, but the execution is really uneven. The lack of a timer means that the pressure of there being consequences from inefficient play, or for getting careless and losing pikmin, exists almost entirely just in the dungeons. The easier ones are a little too easy, and the difficult ones can feel a bit cheap and unfair. Their semi-procedurally generated nature means the level design can be very iffy in terms of encounter design placement of treasure, and the later ones tend to pull a lot of "Surprise! Something randomly fell from the sky and will instantly kill dozens of your pikmin if you're unlucky or weren't expecting it" type of tricks. There are a lot of pointless gates with nothing but blank walls behind them. The fact that you can only get white and purple pikmin in dungeons is also pretty annoying, because if you lose a bunch it can be really tedious to get more of them. Purples especially can only be reliably gained through egregious amounts of grinding in very specific dungeons. It all feels a bit underbaked. The dungeons arent all bad, and most of them have a couple more hand-designed floors that stand out, plus there's the Submerged Castle with its highly terrifying gimmick. But the dungeon issues are enough to drag the game down a bit.

Having 2 captains is a good idea, but it ultimately doesn't actually do much with this mechanic since there's no way to tell them to go somewhere on their own other than having them lie down so pikmin bring them back to the ship. Occasionally you have to position them to relay-throw pikmin up a series of ledges, or weight-activated platforms, but it again, feels a bit underbaked.

One of my favorite parts of Pikmin 2 though is the creature design, and the piklopedia. The descriptions of all the creatures and items from Olimar and the ship's AI add a ton of flavor to the world. The creatures themselves are much more varied than the first game, with plenty of new ones and some variants of old ones. Some are only seen once or twice, and the illusion of a larger ecosystem is very well crafted. Their animation and sound design is fantastic and strikes a perfect balance of cute, weird, and upsetting. Shoutout to what a horrifying concept bulbmin are.

When i was a kid, I liked this sequel more than Pikmin 1, because it felt like a vast world full of hidden secrets and dangers. And it does still evoke some of that feeling even now! But I think in trying to go bigger they created a lush, alive world to explore but spread themselves too thin and lost a lot of the first game's tension and the magic it created.

8,5/10

Jogo bom da porra.
Não dava um puto e esse jogo me trouxe algo muito genuíno.

A mecânica a la dungeon crawler que tem nesse jogo é interessante e bem feita, curti a minha experiência.

Não é tao casual como alguns me falaram, foi uma boa surpresa.

Hei de jogar os próximos.

Oh boy



Yeah I did not like this one nearly as much as 1, I will say that it has improved in multiple areas, in fact I’ll list them right now.
The AI and general controls feel better and less clunky, like how the pikmin follow you more closely don’t get lost from the group as often as they did in the first game, the enemy variety has been expanded, I like exploring the worlds and seeing how these areas have changed since the first game, the story and characters are all actually pretty funny, with how the President is basically in debt to loan sharks because something ate some food, and also the dialogue you get with a bunch of different characters after the days are done, it’s all really charming and fun, I was really enjoying the game up until the debt was fully paid………..then the game got worse, now let me explain why I liked this game a lot less than the original.

You can probably guess why I like it less, one simple five letter word that brings this game down for me and many others…….caves.
Now at first, I actually liked the caves, at least when they started out they weren’t overly difficult and didn’t overstay their welcome, but then I started to worry cause the caves appeared a lot throughout the game, I was thinking this was just gonna be like 20-30% of what the game would be and the rest are just exploring the worlds………nope, it’s about what 60-70% of the game is, just going through these caves that are all randomly generated, and kinda detract from the game’s world, like it’s just little dark tunnels with no connection to the world’s theme, all randomly generated in ways.
Now I could forgive them not looking great if we didn’t have to spend too much time in them……..well, some of these fucking caves can go on for a while, the early ones are nice cause they only go on for like 4-5 levels and are generally over quick, but later in the game they go up to 7, 8, 9 levels, and particularly in the wistful wilds, they go over ten levels, which is just fucking crazy, not to mention that they get way harder as the game goes on, and not in a fair way, more in a “let’s put all these fucking enemies in here with bombs and rocks falling from the ceiling while we have electricity gates all around, which instantly kills any non yellow pikmin”, it’s fucking insane, and not in a good way………but I still got every treasure, still fought the final boss which was actually really cool, but was made unnecessarily difficult because of the gauntlet of a cave you gotta go through before, so I only had like 60 pikmin left, which could all easily be wiped out by the electrical attacks………..but I did it, saved Louie, and went for the final treasure, the weight………which needed 100 purple pikmin to carry it, so I went back and got that and got them to carry it, and I watched them carry it. Slowly. Watching. Them. Carry. It.
The speed of the carrying here felt like the developers just laughing at me, all this agony, all the pikmin lost, and this is what I get………..then you learn that Louie was actually the reason why the whole game happened, it’s like great, I should’ve just left you on the planet.


Look, this game is good, but it just feels like an overall downgrade from Pikmin 1, I think if they had tone down the caves and made them more easily digestible (or not randomly generated) and made them more like the theme of the world above, it would’ve improved the game tenfold.
It’s a game that’s great in short bursts but it sadly really overstays its welcome.


Now onto Pikmin 3

Now this is a true fucking sequel. A bigger, badder, longer, harder version of the first game. The time limit is gone, and now instead of collecting ship parts you're collecting treasures. And you'll be doing some dungeon crawling to get those treasures. I'm very pro-dungeon but this is probably what will turn off some people that prefer the first game. There are also 3 additional new pikmin types, all of which are only found in caverns: the strong but slow purples, the poisonous treasure-finding whites, and the bulbmin, which act as kind of a jack of all trades pikmin but also cannot leave the cavern. These 3 additions increase the moment to moment decisions that the player can make exponentially. Maybe just sending 1 purple to carry something would be more efficient, but maybe it would be better to just send everything you have? Would it be better to convert the bulbmin to a pikmin type that'll carry over for later explorations, or are they going to come in handy for the rest of the cavern? Whatever one chooses, there's probably going to be some reloading that save regardless. The addition of a second playable captain is also tremendous and increases the amount of potential decisions. Louie is also a great addition to the cast as a very divisive character who many fans are still arguing over: is he just an asshole, or is he an asshole but it's okay because he's funny? Overall, it's peak. I'm glad I played it 100%.

Me standing outside your house with a bomb is also a trap, it’s to prevent you from having fun

This is one of the most polarizing games I’ve ever played. Even going into it, I knew this game had a reputation, but I still went in with an open mind. My objective was to collect all the treasures (and beat every dungeon by proxy). It ended up being one of the most annoying experiences in gaming ever.

To start, there are a lot of ideas here that I think are fun and make for an interesting challenge that I wished carried over to the future titles. But the remaining chunk of garbage? I’m hoping it never sees the light of day ever again.

The good? The bosses. With the exception of one boss (Empress Bulblax and her disgusting Larvae spawn), I feel every boss was fun and always had me trying to think about how to tackle them while suffering very few casualties. They all fill me with the fear and anxiety that any good horror game wish it could instill onto me. Huge highlights go to Water Wraith and Man-at-Legs. I think the inherent flaws of the game rear their ugly head when it comes to literally everything building up to the bosses.

The dungeons… This is unfortunately a concept that will not have been perfected until Pikmin 4. What we have here is, at first, a harmless means of getting treasure in secluded areas away from the Daily Timer… then you experience the latter half of the game’s dungeons. Nothing but horrible floor layouts with some of the cruelest enemy design ever and gotcha traps that only the “I love when games do that!” crowd enjoy.

I think what harms this entire concept is Purple Pikmin. There is no feasible way to replenish Purple Pikmin in this game without needing to revisit one of the game’s worst dungeons (Subterranean Complex) at a semi decent sub level every single time. It wouldn’t be so bad, however, if you’re going after every treasure in the game, you NEED a minimum of 100 Purple Pikmin to achieve that goal. Playing the game normally does not net you that much at all, meaning that you already have to repeat dungeon visits numerous times. It’s BECAUSE OF THAT that I restart my game if I lose even a SINGLE Purple because I am not trying to waste anymore time than what the game is having me do to remain “comfortable”.

“Don’t bring Purples then”, why would I not? They’re the best Pikmin in the game, no contest! This game is already asking a lot of me by tippy-toeing across every dungeon floor so I’m not blindsided by some gotcha moment that could cause me tens of casualties at once, so you’re asking me to not use the Pikmin that can take out enemies in seconds because if I don’t they’ll still kill tons of my Pikmin with ease???

I hear this game is as hard as you make it, which I agree is true, but the way it wants you to play sucks the fun out of everything. Whereas the first game asks that you slim down on time management for an exciting tense experience, this game says slow WAY DOWN because you don’t want bombs and rocks dropping on your Pikmin because you decided to play the game just a tad too fast or didn’t spend your in game days doing nothing but grinding Bitter Spray.

May Gatling Groinks never have a happy day in their life.

The only reason this game isn’t lower than 2 1/2 stars is because the rest of the game is still Pikmin. Refined from 1 mechanically and introduces so many cool elements that made the game more exciting to play. But man. The only reason I even beat this game was because I knew Pikmin 3, a better game, was right after this.

this game feels like a double edged sword to me. on one hand the removal of the time limit makes the game a whole lot less stressful, the new pikmin types are fun, and game is honestly just funny as hell sometimes. On the other hand, the lack of a time limit means I have less motivation to get things done, which leads to an overall slower pace. also, the caves, while good in concept, are way too long and tedious. The core pikmin gameplay is still intact and magical, as per usual, but I personally feel like this game is an overall step down from the original.

Unlike Pikmin 1 and 3, this playthrough was my first replay of Pikmin 2 since I first played it 3 years ago (mainly due to the amount of content and the design of the caves not being great for low day runs imo) and also like with my switch playthrough of Pikmin 1, I decided to play it without resetting at all.

HOLY FUCK i forgot how brutal this game can be. Even with the absurdly powerful additions of purple and white pikmin, just one mistake can cause half or even all of your army to be wiped out immediately. The beginning and mid game doesn’t have too many things to catch the player off guard but some of those late game caves are absolutely insane with how stressful they can be. It is immensely satisfying conquering these challenges though, and while I definitely do not recommend doing a no reset run to first time players, I think it definitely added a lot to my enjoyment this time.

The switch port itself is the best version for sure, the lack of the licensed treasures obviously is kind of a bummer but that’s such a minuscule detail overall and you can get the same experience seeing them in game by collecting them and then googling what they looked like in the previous versions. I normally never use my switch in handheld but due to being on vacation as of writing this, I played the whole game like this and actually really liked it. Before 3 Deluxe came to switch the idea of a proper pikmin game on a handheld seemed kinda wild so it’s nice the entire main series is available on the switch.

I’ve loved this game ever since my first playthrough but replaying it really showed me how much this game manages to shine despite being so different from its predecessor and sequel. I think I probably still prefer Pikmin 3 and doubt I’m likely to replay Pikmin 2 as much still but that shouldn’t discredit it for being an amazing game in its own right.

fuck orange bulborbs btw I don’t see those enemies get as much hate as they deserve

The main game is great and improves on the first game a lot but the unorthodox post-game kinda messes with the flow of it when the RNG cave difficulty can range from "challenging but fun" to "do you know what suffering is?"

Sucks because there's (some) good ideas for some of the subfloors, but the randomization of the caves basically leaves everything up to God on if the execution will be good or will you just cheese your way out the floor so you don't end up losing 75% of your squad because of bad enemy or hazard placement. I just hope Pikmin 4 doesn't have this bad of a problem with how it handles caves/dungeons.

In 2023, I triumphed over a childhood fear. Games with timers slashed onto me a mental scar that were never healed until playing through Pikmin and Majora's Mask.

There was a weight lifted off my shoulders. Genuinely, too. In both my gaming and everyday life, I felt I could take any time related problem headed my way. A fog was now cleared.

Having a newfound confidence and developing a bit of a taste for time based challenges now, I've decided to continue my forray into the Pikmin series with Pikmin 2. I've heard in the past the game was somewhat divisive amongst the Pikmin loyalists, but I wasn't sure what I'd find going in.

After having played it, my finding is that Pikmin 2 is... kind of unnecessary as a sequel? I'm glad of it's existence, if not to simply provide more Pikmin style gameplay with new mechanics, but some of the additions feel as though they're unrealized in their potential.

Louie, while a charming character in his own bumbling way, serves very little to the overall gameplay. It's not as if multi-tasking as a feature is useless, it's just I never found myself absolutely needing to utilize this feature.

I could imagine puzzle like labyrinths laid out similar to the elaborate final puzzle of Pikmin 1, needing the player to swap between different Pikmin types as well as between Louie and Olimar. This could take up the main levels you'd traverse and fill out the entirety of the game, but this was never seen anywhere within the game. At least, not on a rudimentary playthrough.

Pikmin 2 is primarily an asset flip style of sequel, so it makes sense as to why this wasn't implemented. You'd have to build on top of iterations of the original game's levels, and would also had to change said levels so drastically to the point that they mind as well be creating brand new ones. Still, there feels like there's missed potential here.

Same could be said about the dungeons. While I enjoy tackling these randomly generated mazes, they leave me wanting more. They're set up as endurance gauntlets, but I would have rather these dungeons contain floors that contained preset puzzles, perhaps alternating every other floor. This to me would not only keep the style of the original game more intact, but would help dungeons feel more engaging.

What also makes the game less engaging is the distinct lack of a timer. Strange coming from the guy who was traumatized by a mere clock ticking down, I know, but I've grown to deeply appreciate the time limit. Call it masochism, call it whatever you'd like, but this element brought a distinct feel and an immense sense of tension to the game, all of which feels lost within the sequel.

All of this isn't to say that Pikmin 2 isn't a worthwhile time, because it most certainly is! Instead, this is meant to exemplify the problems that may occur when designing a game with reusing assets: you can only build on top of what systems and assets existed before.

I've much enjoyed the quality of life changes brought within Pikmin 2. Controlling your squad has never felt better, and being able to organize which group you'd like to take is a godsend! The new Pikmin bring about new advantages and gimmicks to make themselves useful, adding more to your arsenal of tools and boosting the amount of decisions you'll be making.

The dungeons are just endurance gauntlets yes, but they still hold that push and pull struggle for survival that makes Pikmin engaging. Collecting everything within a dungeon feels massively rewarding, especially with some of the later dungeons.

Despite the tension being lost from the absence of a time limit, having the gameplay become more relaxed changes how you approach the game. The tone I could see creating a much smoother experience to experiment within the systems of Pikmin. I personally feel that experimentation is a part of the original's design and it does not feel as punishing due to reseting a day being encouraged, but this circumnavigates those who are still in fear of that hard time limit.

Areas are now remixed slightly, making it exciting to see what new has changed since the first game. Environments now have different seasons, which brings this world more to life. Though the tone may be gone, the serenity is still held intact.

There's much to love about Pikmin 2, but I could see why the divisiveness is present within the community at large. Pikmin 2 doesn't break the mold as much as it fans the flames of the original's originality.

This doesn't make Pikmin 2 a bad nor necessarily a flawed game, but a game that doesn't stand out as much as it could. It's ideas are unrefined from what they may have been capable of achieving, but with what's within the game itself, Pikmin 2 ends up being an enjoyable time within it's own right.

When playing the original Pikmin, the most enjoyable aspects of the game were the exploration, discovery, and learning of how Pikmin operate in the world. Finding and collecting your lost ship parts so that you could escape before time ran out struck a delicate balance of time management and resource conservation skills. The knowledge and experience from the original Pikmin gave me confidence going into its sequel. This time, however, you have more at your disposal. You explore with two captains, there are dungeon-like caves to explore, new Pikmin to command, a large abundance of treasure to find, and a new cast of enemies to impede your progress. With there being no limits on how many days you may use to explore this distant planet, you are given more grace on how you choose to pace yourself through the game.

When playing a sequel it’s always nice to see good things return, but what you are truly looking for are the new features that are being introduced. Pikmin 2 does a great job exposing you to new features in tandem with the original features of Pikmin. For example, you start with a small colony of Red Pikmin. You are then taught the basics of collecting flower pods and enemy carcasses to bolster your forces. This naturally translates into the new goal of this game. Instead of fixing your ship, you are looking for treasure. Having two captains to control allows you to cover more ground within the small time window that you have for each day. I do wish that there was a way to send an inactive captain to specific places. That being said, the ability to coordinate the two captains worked fine to serve the challenges presented. Many obstacles from the first Pikmin game return. Throughout the different environments that you get to explore you will encounter obstacles like the breakable walls and the extendable bridges. Walls that require bomb rocks, interestingly enough, do not make a return. New obstacles include poison emitters and electrical lines. While poison can be recovered from, electricity instantly kills all of your Pikmin except for Yellow ones. There are only a few treasures to be found on the surface, the abundance of treasure needs to be uncovered in the game’s largest feature: caves.

Caves in this game are the focal point of exploration. Pikmin 2 successfully takes the original experience of Pikmin and pivots it in a completely different direction by introducing this single feature. Once you gain access to a cave, the day timer freezes so you can explore at your own pace. Upon descent, you are greeted with a labyrinth of randomly generated floors. Your game saves in between each floor, so if you’re given a bad floor layout you can reset the game for a more desirable outcome. This comes in handy later in the game when there’s a chance for you and your Pikmin to appear immediately within range of enemies. These floors are littered with all kinds of treasures, enemies, and traps, so it is up to you to strategize your approach. Caves demand you to play more thoughtfully as you cannot repopulate your Pikmin whilst exploring them like you can on the surface. Some of the caves do have flowers that can give you a few extra Pikmin, but enemy carcasses are turned into money instead of additional forces. Aptly preparing for a cave excursion is essential and the game gives you enough knowledge of what to bring beforehand. Each cave gives you a preview of what elements will be present within. This gives you a chance to decide what type and how many Pikmin to bring.

To aid your search for treasure, you enlist the help of several different types of Pikmin. Six types, to be exact. You have your original roster of primary color-themed Pikmin; Red and Blue Pikmin retain their respective immunities to fire and water while Yellow Pikmin lose the ability to pick up bomb rocks in exchange for immunity to electricity. You can still throw Yellow Pikmin higher into the air than any other Pikmin. New Pikmin types include Purple Pikmin, White Pikmin, and Bulbmin. Purple Pikmin do twice as much damage as a Blue, Yellow, or White Pikmin and are also ten times heavier and can lift with the strength of ten Pikmin. White Pikmin can find treasure buried underground and dig it up, are immune to poison and are poisonous to hostile creatures. Bulbmin are parasitic Pikmin that have taken over Red Bulborbs. You obtain them by killing the leader of the group. They are immune to all environmental hazards but are slower and weaker than regular Pikmin. Although Bulbmin cannot journey with you out of a cave, they make for a nice disposable supplement for your forces. These unique attributes open up the game to more challenges by combining returning hazards with new ones. You can now encounter poison/electric gates and much heavier items to be carried back to your ship. The main thing to note here is that the new Pikmin types don’t have onions. To get them you have to sacrifice your main forces (or Bulbmin) to convert them into these new Pikmin types. This makes White and Purple Pikmin intrinsically more valuable. By adding three new Pikmin types, and limiting your access to them, the game can create a new atmosphere of interesting challenges and resource management.

Locating and collecting treasures is your primary goal in Pikmin 2. The entire reason you have returned is to collect treasure so you can pay off your boss’s loan that was taken to cover a lost shipment. The treasures you find in the original release are directly related to things we have in real life (i.e. a Duracell battery and a bottle cap that says Sprite on it). Some of these items are mundane garbage to us, others are fun or interesting. You get a whole range of treasures. One of the caves yields only confectionaries. The best part of this is that your ship names and describes each of these treasures. I often found myself getting a good chuckle from some of the names given to the treasures. Naming a queen chess piece “Priceless Statue” and the king chess piece “Useless Statue” was probably my favorite example of this. The unfortunate thing about the remaster is that all of the third-party brands were removed from the game and replaced with generic fictional brands. While the game is still enjoyable, I found this diminished my appreciation for the treasures. Things that had a generic label ended up being less interesting to me and so I was less likely to look at it in my treasure catalog in between days.

The setting isn’t entirely dissimilar to the first Pikmin game. Although your adventure takes you to new locations, you are still visiting the same planet so that makes sense. While the first Pikmin had more explicit theming, this charm isn’t realized so well in Pikmin 2. You have four locations like before, but only two of them feel truly defined. The Valley of Repose is an oblong-shaped snowscape. Lacking much detail, you’re left pursuing the few obstacles that are laid down before you in this introductory area. Awakening Wood is a more lush environment. You find the Blue Pikmin onion here despite them being locked behind an electrified gate. This area is more square and features only a few challenges. The Perplexing Pool was the most interesting environment for me. It features a central land mass that’s surrounded by water. You find the Yellow Pikmin onion here. This area had the most interesting challenges that demanded the use of multiple types of Pikmin. Finally, the Wistful Wild is accessed only once you’ve cleared the debt owed by your boss. This area felt more plain. You see very little opposition between you and the caves. The lack of bosses on the surface undermines any sort of challenge that you may face since all of the creatures are decently manageable. I found these places to be much less memorable than its predecessor. It feels like the environmental innovation was spent more on developing the caves. This would have been fine if the caves were less procedurally generated. Because of this, only a few caves are truly memorable.

What’s more interesting than the environments, are the creatures that inhabit them. Some returning creatures are Bulborbs/Bulbears, Burrowing Snagrets, Blowhogs, and many others. Pikmin 2 almost triples the amount of creatures that you will encounter throughout your journey. Notable additions are the various types of Dweevils, Wollywogs, and some new variations of the aforementioned returning creatures. Each of these creatures have unique behaviors and ways of impeding your progress in the game. Anode Dweevils steal treasures and wear them as protection. Swooping Snitchbugs make a return and are often paired with the new Bumbling Snitchbug. Bumbling Snitchbugs grab and throw your captains around which can get pretty annoying when you’re trying to retrieve your pikmin from the ground. Seeing many different enemies is a marked improvement upon the cast that you got to enjoy in the first game. Many of these enemies have great designs and are fun to read about in the game’s new feature, the Piklopedia. This catalogs every enemy you encounter and gives you information on each of them. Given entries based on the perspective of both Olimar and Louie, also provides a fun spin on the information gathered for each creature. This can be helpful if you are struggling to figure out a good way to tackle a particular creature.

You also encounter several bosses as each cave has at least one. They are usually found at the end of the cave and some are encountered multiple times. The Empress Bulblax is the first boss you will encounter and is easy. When you face her again you are given a much stricter challenge as she’s constantly reproducing Bulborb Larvae that can eat your Pikmin before dying. I’d say her encounter in the late game is more forgiving than in the mid-game but that’s because her mid-game encounter is poorly designed. Sloped hallways would be okay if your Pikmin were able to consistently climb them without fear of the Bulborb Larvae. The Emperor Bulblax makes a return and is seen a few times as well. Not much has changed except you can’t use Yellow Pikmin to throw bomb rocks into their mouths like before. You’re left to try other strategies with them. My favorite boss was the Water Wraith. The Water Wraith is encountered in the Submerged Castle, which is only accessible with Blue Pikmin. The cave has all types of hazards along with a unique gimmick. The boss drops in on you if you take too long on any given floor. This applies pressure for you to hurry to the end where you’ll be given the proper tools to defeat it. This was the first cave that challenged my ability to manage my time and resources properly. With proper strategization (and a few choice resets of certain floors) I was able to avoid the Water Wraith altogether for a few floors. The boss itself isn’t that tough once you gain access to its weakness, but the challenge it imposes on you is what makes it so effective. The only other boss that elicited a strong response was the Man-at-Legs. This was a Beady Long Legs equipped with a machine gun. Although terrifying at first, once you have a chance to think rationally the boss isn’t too difficult to handle.

Fully delving into what Pikmin 2 has to offer gave me a lot of thrills. Despite the environments being less fleshed out, I still enjoyed searching for the treasures both on the surface and underground in the caves. The inclusion of three new Pikmin types was a welcome feature and well implemented. I ultimately found Pikmin 2 to be a more engaging game for me. I still appreciate the original Pikmin and its simplicity but Pikmin 2 has so much more to offer. I did find that towards the end of Pikmin 2, I started to feel a bit of fatigue with the longer caves. One cave is effectively a boss rush and another cave just has tons of grueling floors to tackle. Then once you finally reach the bottom, you have an extremely tough final boss to face. The Titan Dweevil is perhaps the most challenging aspect of Pikmin 2. This boss forces you to play to the strengths of your Pikmin. It was a much more challenging boss than the Emperor Bulblax in 1, and it was more thematically interesting as a final boss. The seamless introduction of new features balances well between innovation and stagnation. The accomplishment of collecting all 201 treasures felt satisfying. By the time I had completed all that I wished to accomplish, I was ready to put the game down and play something else. Pikmin 2 gave me just enough content to feel satisfied, if not a little bit more.

Os Horrores da Guerra 2: O Inimigo Agora é Outro

Em questão de gameplay ele é muito melhor que o antecessor, o controle e gerenciamento dos Pikmins melhorou muito, ainda mais com a adição do Louie. Os Pikmins roxo e branco também ótimas adições, principalmente se eles forem usados nos combates.

Mas o que mata esse jogo para mim são as cavernas, já que elas são um dungeon crowler ao invés do gerenciamento de tempo e recursos, no começo elas são legais para dar uma diferenciada loop padrão, mas ela rapidamente ficam insuportáveis, porque além delas não se diferenciarem muito uma das outras, elas são enormes com andares sem fim. Quando eu cheguei no dia 12, eu basicamente já visto tudo que esse jogo poderia oferecer.

Não é um jogo ruim, mas as cavernas são uma parte tão grande do jogo, elas determinam o seu aproveitamento.

die louie die


A step down from pikmin 1 in my opinion, the strength of the arcade-y feeling of 1 is lost here, instead trading it for the caves. The caves are fun, but they really do lose steam if they go for more than 7 floors, making them a bit of a slog to get through

Still pikmin though! The pikmin formula still clearly works.

Taking away 1.5 stars for how annoying the caves were. A great idea in practice, but some of the challenges were just obnoxious. Especially the randomly dropped rocks and bombs.

Otherwise, this game was amazing. It improved upon everything Pikmin 1 did.

Also I hate Louie

Pikmin 2 - despite throwing its punches in ways that can sometimes be more annoying that entertaining - was a game I found myself hooked on. It asks a lot more of the player than the first game, but introduces its new mechanics in ways that make it all manageable. It feels like the team really had the chance to stretch their legs with this game and iterate on the ideas of Pikmin 1.

From what I hear, Pikmin 3 is a bit of a breather and is more in line with the first game, which I'm definitely excited to get to sometime later this year. Good stuff!

I didn't realize this the first time I played Pikmin 2 on the Gamecube, but this is just the Pikmin 1 maps with a bunch of caves on them. Nintendo pulled a "Tears of the Kingdom", the lazy bastards. The caves are awful, discouraging exploration by being small and tunnel filled, and highlighting the limitations of the game's Pikmin controls by filling them with enemies that have attacks which are harder to move 100 Pikmin out of the way. If you have a choice between playing Pikmin 1 or 2 I would go with 1, exploring is more exciting and there are not caves to pad out the game.